


Satan penetrates the heart of Val

by meanboss



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Age Difference, Body Horror, Drama, Dubious Consent, Gen, Horror, Multi, Rape/Non-con Elements, Trypophobia, Unreliable Narrator, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-10-28 17:58:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10836420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanboss/pseuds/meanboss
Summary: Snippets of what could have took place between march and july. For Outlast 2.





	1. We have dug a tunnel

He wouldn’t have gotten to the place he did if it weren’t for the people who love him. And he would have never seen that love if he hadn’t made a habit of sitting unmoving at his dinner table for half-days, picking at stale bread instead of ever having full meals and heating opium when Knoth had some to spare. Val’s use of the substance grew exaggerated, and body thinner in the last few weeks he compromised to his position at the temple, nothing else to occupy his time in contrast to the forty-something things that previously did. _Friends_ showed worry; these people who appreciated his efforts at keeping the orphaned children under his care as comfortable as possible, who came to him with their personal troubles; ripped rags in need of sewing, colic ridden infants. Wives started showing up at Val’s door with bowls of mashed potatoes, fermented tea or just company; the men shared cigars they got from distant relatives under the preacher’s nose and artisanal beer. It was around that time Val realized he had people who cared for him, who didn’t go looking for another fool to teach them how to brighten up yellowing shirts as soon as the first one ran out of good will. They could have let him get killed by his own mourning.

At first, the sympathy came with a pang of guilt that almost made the solitude and hunger preferable. Never before had Val put faith in them or in anything at all. These were the same people he mocked in the back of his mind while alone in his house, the men and women he patronized, the devil on his shoulder called them blind retards, desperate headless roosters, yapping parrots for the gospel.

But a couple of pints of beer later the men spilled their guts, put their frustrations out in a childish but truthful manner and the women let go of their timid nature to express a more opinionated and passionate version of themselves. Val found it a sight to be seen.

They found themselves becoming louder, outspoken, but only amongst themselves. Drunken mockery being spit into the air about that short pile of leathery flesh covered in high cotton whom they followed like sheep to a sheepherder.

Jael said he had a small stubby cock, Val told her he knew and complimented her descriptions with more explicit detail; the woman, with shock and tears in her eyes, would laugh until all the air had escaped her. Aaron said Papa Knoth got stuck in chairs and that at some point had to hire a silent helper to wipe him at the stool, blaming a shoulder injury he would have acquired while fishing--Aaron assured that that had been a lie, that the old man had tripped on his own legs and rolled down the chapel stairs after a night of heavy drinking. Val found out Knoth was self conscious of his balding head and the similarities his chin held to a blob of cottage cheese. They didn't hold themselves to any standard of respect or maturity, the venom leaking from the corner of their mouths would shock the bitterest of curmudgeons.

There were clumsy impressions, inside jokes, thorough descriptions of how they would slaughter this pig given the opportunity. The hurt that the good humor had been masking surfaced a bit more with each little meeting. Val only spoke to one or two people at a time, but knew that they all held many commonalities. A group assembly would do all their hearts good, but the tension at Temple Gate had been rising with the recent changes made to their gospel, and given Val's rocky relationship with the Preacher, he knew the commotion in his home would raise a few eyebrows if it grew. He had inspired gossip his entire life, and just as there were people who loved him, there were people who spat on the floor he walked.

One night, he and Beau sat together with their opium and their stale bread.

  

* * *

 

 

"Josiah gave me all this wine he had pilin’ up, said he and Mary was quittin and he dont wanna sell it ‘cause he dont want people thinking things."

He pulled the white off of the crust and rolled it around in his palm and into a ball, like a child. At the tender age of nineteen, some would argue he was one still

Val breathed in the remnant fumes lifting off the crudely made pipe on the table, looking like a greasy, naked mess across from the young man. Nausea and fever overcame her whenever they pleased, all from attempting to space out her uses of the drug still in her possession-- Val would rather die before asking Knoth for anymore, and preferred to let the stock end and then never touch the stuff again.

"I think she got knocked up. But if ya ask me that’s more the reason to drown in booze, drown the fetus in it. Better kill it while it can’t feel."

The other shuddered and looked up at Beau under heavy lidded eyes. Beau did not say the things he did with the intention of upsetting her, but he knew they lit a fire in her that sometimes became fits of rage-- and other times, became passion. Either the kind they put to use by shagging half to death or the type that inspired long winded rants of things that would never be done. Regardless of the outcome, he felt like they both won two out of three times.

"...Or maybe they wanna leave" he went on, unprovoked. "dumb fucking idea, Papa's been like an eagle over our heads. You even know how far we are from just 'bout anything? I dont. Could be miles and miles"

"can you picture that? Mary leggin’ it through the desert? She hardly gets out the house."

He crumbled the tight ball of bread with his fingers and crossed his arms below the plate the mess fell upon. Eyes dug a hole through Val's shiny forehead. Beau continued to try and steer the conversation to a very specific location.

"I dreamed 'bout it when I was a kid. Skeedadling with nothing but a blanket stick on my shoulder"

"Ma would never hear any of it too."

Val gave him nothing in return other than the noise her congested chest made when she tried to breathe through the nose. Beau was used to the lady thing sparing  words with him-- he knew what went through her mind, she saw him as a fresh plum to bite into, small and messy but soft and sweet like pastry. A change from the older folk Val laid whose sole objective were to get off and get out. He wanted to please and impress, but could only do so with in the flesh;  far from the haver of bright ideas.

But just like those wild dreams of escape in his childhood, Beau continued to fantasize about the impossible, like the day Val would become, fully and admittedly, his woman and no one else’s.

"...What your dreams been like?."

She combed through her hair, locks stuck together with sweat. To avoid the prying gaze of the boy Val's eyes followed a small moth that attempted again and again to land on the hot lamp above their heads. She spoke at it:

"Not gonna talk about this with you no more"

"if you wanna hear about sex and gore, go talk to your friends."

“What?You think I’m into it?” He pressed forwards, arms occupying now the majority of the surface on the table, trying to invade Val's personal space like all these younguns eventually learned to do from their daddies. It was dreadful to watch, especially when you had watched them grow. "'bout as much as I’m into you right now. "

There were few seconds of quiet Before Val responded, eyes flicker over to the scene Beau acted out. Her voice came low and hoarse “If you don’t like looking at it, you don’t have to. You’ll hit it from the back until you get sick of it before I pretty myself up for you.”

He backed away and soothed out his frown-- about as menacing as baby chick trying to peck. "No that’s. That’s not what I meant”

“you’re worrying me with the shit you been doing.”

“What have I been doing?”

“…Nothing, mostly talking. And people are talking about your talking.”

“Your point?”

“Are you plottin something?”

“No.”

“Well. Then. Get off the pot." Beau’s harsh tone also went down to unsure whisper. The moth landed on his shoulder and the kid slapped it, the little insect was used as an excuse again to look away from someone else; he picked its gray gore from his skin, a leg and a wing at a time, the thoroughness of a nurse cleaning up a wound.

The point he wanted her to believe he had was not the point he actually desired to reach. Val sneered. She was still in a bad mood but finally began to sound a bit more playful. "I wouldn’t involve you if I was to plan anything, for starters. So I guess you’d never know."

"Why? I can help. I hate this place as much as the rest of your herd does."

"You help me plenty."

"No, let me _really_ help you."

They fell in a dead silence, a game to see who held their ground the longest; Beau spoke confident words but his posture said otherwise; always afraid he would push Val too far this once and be banished from her house. Her bed.

On the other hand, he also feared being overestimated. Val's kind of crazy passed off as charm most the time, but he didn't know what she would do if he put his life in her hands. Surprisingly, he didn’t fully trust her with it anymore, hadn’t ever since he grew out of his second pair of shoes and transitioned into a more grown-up world.

And she looked truly thoughtful this time, all the while Beau grew more nervous, sweating cold like his love interest in their own withdrawal.

"...We need a way to talk more freely. The lot of us. I’m open to suggestions."

"Like a hideout?"

"Yes. A safe place to be ourselves."

The boy nodded his head. It sounded like a simple task and a simple objective; separation. It's how they dealt with the scalled, and they too did not bother nobody anymore and vice-versa. Did not sound like he was gonna have to go to the frontlines of any wars to get pussy.

 

* * *

 

 

Instead of going up to their house Val asked if Chester could do the delivery, a liter jug of freshly brewed cinnamon and honey tea to start the morning and a note with few words written on it; ‘ _Mary, come see me when you can’_.

Chester listened to the request with a squint, said something along the lines of flying too close to the sun and melting wax, but didn’t ask any further questions since he didn’t want to get too involved, in case this was as petty in nature as it came across as. At Josiah’s house, Mary opened the door and nervously accepted the gift, color drained from her face when hearing who had arranged it for her. She could not believe Val would do such thing on a Sunday.

As soon as the door was shut Josiah came to interrogate her, he could smell the strong scent of cinnamon  and the message it carried, a old wive’s tale of doubtful efficiency but clear intentions. The type of subtle menace he would expect from the three-letter devil residing not that many houses over. He told Mary to stay right where she was, took the jug in his hand and marched out. People would have what to chatter about, this fragrant drink that no one seemed to want.

Val awaited on the balcony, having spotted Josiah making his way over a entire minute before he reached the front door, their gazes locked the entire time; one seemingly placid, the other filled with wrath and clearly using all of his willpower not to start shouting profanities at the deacon whilst still visible to all the curious neighbors.

He did not knock. Val’s entrance was kept unlocked during the daytime. This used to be the general rule as people had nothing to fear from one another, but as of late more and more families had begun to bolt their doors.

Inside the house, he shouted Val’s name and then asked _“ **is this you trynna be funny?!** ”_

Josiah stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited for Val to make an appearance. As soon as within reach, the man lunged the jug forwards with a tight grip on its handle and drenched the catamite in tea.

Val had the air knocked out of him by sheer surprise, took back a step and nearly went falling down when his foot could not immediately find a surface to land on, had he not latched onto the railing for dear life. The tea was still hot but not scalding and only the lower half of his face and neck stung slightly and started to glow red.

“You damn…. S-Scoundrel” Josiah spat out “Hope you g-got a giggle out of it!”

Coming out of a stunned state, Val attempted to straighten his spine and wipe his face on his forearm, mouth agape and eyes wide. Josiah, for some reason, retreated a foot but continued to hold up an accusing finger. “Stay the fuck away from my wife, **and** that kid while we at it”

“Beau has nothing to do with this.”

“I know he don’t, I said you to stay away from him”

The stairs creaked. Josiah received a brief, puzzled scowl as Val staggered past him, hair dripping wet and stuck to his features just as his clothes now were. He took the jug from his hands, it slipped right off his unexpecting fingers and got carried over to the kitchen counter to be set down. Carelessly, the other gave Josiah his back as he did.

The effeminate man always looked frail and could probably be snapped in half over his knee like a stick, but the eccentricity in the way he carried himself and reacted to something as humane as that emotional outburst is what kept Josiah from turning this into a full fledged fist-fight.

It always looked as if there was something about to tear through his skin and devour the whole town.

 _When the true devil came it would bare the face of a beast, the bosom of a woman, hermes’_ _caduceus raising from its lap, pumped stiff with blood. it would tempt them with lust disguised as_

“That boy’s the first I ever had to raise. You couldn’t keep _him_ away from _me_ if you tried”

To deny that Val used him for selfish ends would feel like a lie, so he held onto Beau’s own apparent desire to be taken advantage of.

He turned, the two faced each other across the small rustic room, Josiah hadn’t left his spot by the stairs and stood still with nervous hands on his hips, a large darkened stain by his feet where some tea had spilled.

“Paul will flip on you when he hears you made his kid into a sodomite _and_ a snitch.”

“Not a snitch, he got just a big mouth. Blame yourself for forgetting that.”

“…I know.”

They looked at their feet, feeling the nearly physical weight of that veil of personal resentment being lifted off to reveal their dread. For Mary’s sake, Val had once committed one of many atrocities. Something trusted upon the parents to do but that they could not bring themselves to go through with. Josiah would never admit to it, but not only did he agreed to give someone else the responsibility, as he also turned his back not to witness the blood shed.

Ever since, Mary confided in him with every little thing. Ever since, Josiah cursed Val’s name as if he ordered the child’s death himself. As if back to that day, Val raised his eyes to look at their tragedy in the eye but Josiah continued to stare at the floorboards.

“Is Mary carrying another baby?”

“We think so.”

“Don’t do that to yourselves again.”

“We do as we damn well please.”

“Knoth will have it slain.”

“He don’t have to heard about it.”

They sounded like they hadn’t thought it through well enough.

“What if it is the antichrist.”

“You know what, I hope it is. I hope it is and that it burns everything that maniac ever touched to ash.”

His response did not come late, and It did not sound like defeat but rather like reliance. Val knew then that Wade had seen the same things he did, and a small ball of heat traveled from his throat to his belly and then lower.

Josiah did not take back any of his words, but he left in a rush. Val didn’t move for an undefined number of minutes, wet hot and restless and seeing not what was in front the eyes, but something else.

 

* * *

  

A note was slipped through a crack between the frame and window sill, reading _“At my fathers last job before he retired two hours after curfew- B_ ”, pretentious at best. Val wasn’t sure if this was any better than coming to his door and telling him where and when to meet— maybe much in the way Val sent Mary that note with the cinnamon tea, Beau was doing this so he could avoid instant confrontation.

He considered not showing up, not even entirely certain of the note’s meaning; it was far from and enigma,, but maybe rather a bit too vague. If coming from anyone else Val might entertain the ideia of a hidden meaning within, but it was Beau who wrote it. It became easy to draw the most obvious conclusion. You can’t think too hard on what that boy says.

Paul worked in the mines his whole life and adequately helped  to close the very last after it stopped being fruitful, it should have been properly dealt with to preserve the quality of the soil, but after the death of three men in a freak accident the work was left incomplete. Back then, death was a tragedy.

He figured what Beau had in mind, but failed to see how it would work in practice. The area was shut by lock and key—which you can work around, but doesn’t stop it from being easily accessible _and_ predictable.

Val expressed all this to him when they met at the caved in entrance that the rails lead into. It was just them and the crickets in a suffocating night, Val was late because he fought his cold sweats all the way here, which Beau made sure of pointing out before even explaining himself.

“I aint saying we go in through here”

“But you do _want in_ ”

He said no more, shook his head and dragged Val further and upwards. They passed a cabin on their way to a flat bit of land where blades of grass attempted to grow between the loose gravel; stomach turned when Beau came out the weak wooden door with a pair of shovels in his hands.

“I know where dad dug to get the bodies out.”

“I thought they’d  be left to rot.”

“Nah, Dad couldn’t bear that.”

Beau was the one to scan the ground, digging several shallow holes that eventually led to hard stone while Val waited, sat upon a rock, face between his knees trying to make it through the light-headedness. He couldn’t be any less excited when Beau announced he had hit the jackpot, turning this into a two-men job. Val joined, thankful for having chosen britches and boots for tonight’s messy date.

“Come on princess” The boy egged her on. The other would glare and  bury her tool aggressively into the moist earth, vision turning purple and black with each hit. Val thought that if she fainted and gave Beau the scare of his life, that it would be well deserved. The deeper they went the more compact became the soil, the movement became so automatic at a certain point that Val wouldn’t even realize when they found themselves leg-deep in a hole.

Eager to exhaust Beau’s ideas, she would refuse to leave even when the boy himself got tired and her ears started to ring.

One of the strikes of the shovel met no resistance, at all.

Val, barely present in the moment anymore, put a pause to her manic motion and stared at the small slit-like opening made in the corner of their hole, right at the angle between what would the floor and walls of that grave. She drove the shovel into and around it, watched the earth collapse onto itself and reveal, eventually, a small passage, for now barely big enough for an adult to crawl into

Beau observed, taking a breather of his own accord but also hypnotized by the other person’s sudden determination. Val was animal-like, caked up to the waist and from hand to elbow in reddened brown, dark stains underneath her arms and down her back. Blue eyes were huge.

“Is this it?”

“Hm, _prolly_.” he said.

Returning home, their moods would have been reversed and one would think Val had sucked the boy’s vitality dry up on that hill.

 


	2. At the slaughter

_Daddy’s boy_ stopped on their way back for a swim, he said there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Paul would wake him up the next morning, belt in hand, ready to give him the ass whooping of a lifetime. Might as well control the amount of trouble he will be in by not ruining the house’s rugs. Beau would accept the most crippling of flues in exchange for not having to go through that awkward conversation. He would air dry more than happily and blame a friend’s idea to do a late-night getaway-- in which his father wouldn’t believe in, but all he could do was make accusations in return.

Val waited, looking around the bushes as if anyone out here at this time would have a reason honorable enough of their own to rat them out. She didn’t set a foot in the water, preferring to wash up in the comfort of her own home.

They went their separate ways before entering the town, Val was in the best mood she could be in after such demanding physical labor, and Beau was proud to have anything to do with it. Before going, Val whispered him a genuine _Good Night_ and his little boy heart skipped a beat. Each of them marched quietly but confidently down the roads that would lead them to their respective homes the fastest. When Val pushed open her unlocked door, she saw a woman sitting at hers small dinner-table, flickering used matches up in the air and trying to catch them in the palm of her hand in complete darkness. At the sight of Val, she paused her antics and picked up the matchbox, used it to light the lantern she had set in front of herself.

“I been in here waiting for hours, sugar” Mary said.

Val shut the door behind him and took a few careful steps towards her. “You made _me_ wait for days”

She turned sideways in her chair, holding the lantern up to shed light on her smile. “You said to come as soon _as I could_ ”

The impediments could be seen in her sunken eyes, waxy skin, the brand new  and lonely ulcer on her top lip. Val kept his observations to himself, Mary wasn’t as worried about being indelicate. “…Were you out there fucking a sow? What in the hell.” She spouted at the figure standing mere inches before her, emitting heat and the unfiltered scent of open soil, caked head to toe in dried up mud that crackled all over Val’s skin as if he were a clay doll. He got down on his knees and put his arms to rest upon her thighs, and despite the unappealing appearance, the woman did not flinch from the contact. She scrunched up Val’s hair, hardened at the roots from a mixture of dirt and sweat. He said:

“I have a plan for us, Mary.”

“For us?”

“Me, you and for anybody who wants to be set free from God’s cruel hands, Mary.”

“You talking all kinds of crazy.”

“I been hearing crazy my whole life, this is different.”

He scooted up between her legs, rough hands made their way up Mary’s skirt and flattened over her stomach, swollen now only ever so slightly with what could be fluid, or could be something else.

“My kinda crazy simply don’t believe this child done anything that justifies it being murdered.”

Mary set the lantern back on the table, as close as she leaned to the other one’s face it was now nearly indistinguishable under the veil of their own shadows.

“I don’t even know if there’s a child.” She whispers.

“But there will be, if not yours, someone else’s.”

“ _Val_ ”

“And Papa Knoth will slit its throat before its shoulders can squeeze past hips”

“ _Shh_.”

Papa Knoth, had of course, never actually lifted a finger as far as they knew. A man who can’t wipe his own ass would never kill a child on their own, only arrange so it happened by other means. Val, intimate with him since birth, once trusted onto Knoth the most crude expression of his feelings; he said the blood, even after being washed off, still weighed on his shoulders and eyelids, made him feel putrid as if some leftover molecule still continued to organically spoil in a crevice of Val’s body that he failed to reach with simple soap. He carried that feeling with him wherever he went, heavy, foul-smelling, so real to himself now others begun to see it.

He was told to recite a prayer before bed and lay in a tub of vinegar. Knoth had been avoidant since.

Coming out of that hole in the ground he and Beau dug up, the heaviness was very different. Val’s new bodysuit of taupe scales were comforting, cleansing, he would shed them later like a serpent, disintegrate them in water and come out reborn.

Its Mary who had him bathe. She brought in a half-full bucket of water that had been collected earlier that day into the backroom, there was a rag in the wooden tub and a piece of dry soap that he mostly ignored. They didn’t do much more talking, the woman didn’t think he was adept to it right now and Val could tell she would insist he ‘cooled off’  if he touched on the subject once more. In silence, he got naked and got clean all whilst she watched, dipping the rag in the water and scrubbing the clay off his limbs, squeezing the mud off of it and repeating. By the end, both the water in the bucket and around his ankles was dark brown.

Done, Val left the mess to be dealt with another time and crept up to the lady leaned against a wall nearby like a needy house cat. They only had the moon to provide any visibility and he saw the shoulders on her silhouette tense up before Val’s intentions turned clear. His hands rode her skirt up and fondled what she had between her legs. The woman exhaled the start of a laugh and pulled away.

They had run up and down those stairs before as part of foreplay, but Mary’s body hadn’t been so up to part as of late, and for her sake they would literally cut some of the chase. The path turned linear, a one-way trip to the bed that he made calmly while she called for him through each door they passed. Val was a slender, slow shadow leaving a trail of water droplets behind him, not a word said on his part while Mary giggled to herself like a teenager, skipping from the door to the bottom of the stairs—from the corridor to the bedroom.

She shut the door on him and threw herself on the mattress, body being made into a ball in the corner while hugging tightly onto a pillow. Mary held her breath and listened to the knob being turned.

Val stormed in and grabbed the woman by the wrists, they sucked and grinded and fucked and the sheets soaked it all up, they’d smell heavenly to Val and putrid to anyone else who lied in them and still pretended to have a standard. They covered each others mouths often because the houses had been built too close together and with thin walls. They didn’t get even a second of shut-eye—when they finished up the sun was threatening to show its face in the horizon and Mary had to run back home with her cunt still throbbing. Josiah was waiting for her at the living room.

 

* * *

 

 

That made him a man who had been awake for over twenty hours now, and other than a ache in his biceps and a feeling of weightlessness, Val felt fine. He emptied the dirty water from his tub outside and the bucket, refilled it at the well and used that to clean the filthy clothes he had worn last night, hung them up on the balcony and stood looking right through whatever made into his field of vision. But truthfully, Val saw nothing.

He had his elbows resting on the railings for so long his arms fell asleep, his hunched back started to feel the prickling of ants running across it, all the sound was blocked out and the person who materialized next to him had to shout his name until the people beneath them stopped to look at the commotion, moving on when nothing of importance was proven to be happening. A younger deacon had invited themselves in, they had a fleshy face with no features that could be distinguished through the blurry filter covering Val’s eyes, said they needed him at the chapel as soon as possible.

Val told them to lead him as if he had never made that path before, the silence coming from the deacon felt as it should have been uncomfortable for both, but his superior felt numb to social formalities and continued to stare until something had been done. The deacon asked if he had any food in him, Val responded with

_“I ate enough of his woman’s cunt to never feel hunger again”_

The other choked. His dick had certainly felt someone else’s heat at this point, but in his position they weren’t encouraged to share. Val felt tempted to press him but when he blinked the blurry deacon was steps away from him, and continuing to move farther. The ants on Val’s back bit into his skin and as he followed the , his hands also reached back and slipped into the wide collar of his blouse,  fingernails dug deep into his flesh, scratching to no avail as nothing could be felt but the prickling. He read once in a book that somewhere in the world, bugs are sewed on the linens of gloves and put on boy’s hands to torture them into becoming men. He pictured a swarm of fire ants making their way up his ankles, some went into his boots and entered beneath his subcutaneous tissue through the underpart of his toenails and opened wounds on his skin to make passage. They buzzed like bees, like small machines vibrating where it felt good and where it didn’t. Val looked around and he was completely alone, the back of his apprentice in front of him and ignorant of what took place behind him. They were the only ones in the trail, as if the town had been scared away by the insects., the people who earlier gave him looks up on the balcony gone in the few minutes he thought passed. Things had been left on the ground as if families made it out in a rush—families of adult men and women because all the children were dead, the clothes Val saw forgotten on the ground nearly sent him into a frenzy, would he be eaten alive by the ants? Only fabric left by the time they reached the steps of the chapel? If this was god’s punishment for his blasphemy, he wanted to know what the others had done wrong to suffer the same fate, and what the boy leading him had done right to seem unaffected.

He hears the screams of kids through two heavy doors, they’re joining the buzzing in this brain while the ants piledrive through his meat like worms eat their way into a corpse. He’s either the mines or the body of Christ. The body that Christ literally picked to possess, not Christ himself but a vessel that now belongs to him. Val is owned by a god, but this god tells him to do nothing, he only screams into his ears along with the children and the choir, but two sets of those voices sound desperate, horrified, the choir is a glorious chant that sends shiver through his spine, puts tears in his eyes. They are the voice of Christ, they give him power to do as he is desired to and their singing will stop as soon as the deed is done, and Val will be left alone with only shaky faith to lean on and take comfort in. Tunnels are being dug, spiraling around his bones, they create pathways connecting nerves to blood vessels and his body is flooded with feeling, he is thrown onto a pedestal and singers are turning into mourners, a child’s body is put in his arms and it begs for the noise to be ceased. Val wishes the same.

“I thought you had drowned”

And his friends after they were told to run.

There’s no use in trying to catch any sort of reply, the building is drowning in sound. A knife is put in his hands and Papa’s voice joins the crowd, descriptions of the circles of hell match with what Val saw and felt. The noise in the choir continues to drop mouth by mouth, the kid has its neck cut like a chicken, he reaches deep into its throat with his hand as if to do a beheading, he does it one after the other like a worker in a poultry farm. The screaming in his skull all syncs up into a single, deafening shriek, not repulsed by the actions but saddened by them, he shares Val’s dread and desperation instead of simply looking down upon it. He was there when he orgasmed early that morning too, providing nothing but euphoria then.

Val’s vision turns a milky white, the ants stop buzzing and empty the holes in his body like a field stripped of its resources, he’s left hollowed. Knoth says a couple of words and everyone leaves.

 

* * *

 

Everyone was encouraged to watch the slaughter, but to stay and witness the burning of the corpses was a decision to be made by each individual of their own accord. Many were too dazed to move and put themselves through the entirety of the horror almost accidently, they stood there after the fire died and poked the charred bodies with sticks until they broke completely apart and stopped to resemble humans. Josiah saw Val amongst those and recognized that he’d make part in it if nothing was done about it.

The man pulled him away from the scene, Val’s face was blank and white as a sheet of paper, not even shock or sadness painted over it. Josiah dirtied his hands with blood in the process of returning home, Mary had been hiding in the basement. Nobody was likely to notice her absence earlier, much less come looking for her singularly, but she was still terrified of being seen and the single sore on her lip being pointed out. Josiah would have stayed too, but she insisted— sooner or later something would go terribly wrong in one of these gatherings, and they couldn’t both stay behind and clueless when it did.

But it hadn’t been that time. All the way from her home, Mary heard everybody go through the motions as they always did, and then heard Josiah open the front door and make his way in soon after the choir quit. What differed this time is how he had arm around a bloodied Val, who he sneaked out of there like a souvenir.

After the awkward morning their had, Mary wasn’t sure if she would ever be allowed to see Val again. She said the most stupid t things in her post-coital stupor, about love and about friends and about the fine lines that differentiated a marriage from faith and faith from loyalty between men and women. Said she laid with him as she laid with Val and Val laid with others for his own reasons that she did not care about; his affection didn’t and would never reduce her appetite for her spouse’s touch, and if anything she wished he would share the sentiment and the joy of feeling love from more than one heart like they did when they had a child of their own to adore and care for.

Josiah went through all the stages of grief for the second time that month in the matter of an hour, left her with a black eye and feelings of regret, and then did as he always does. Pretended nothing was wrong.

Now, for the first time in years, Mary looked at her husband through the cracked open trapdoor like a saint himself, here to save us all. She’d thank Christ for shedding light into Josiah’s mind, but the glory was all his to take pride in.


	3. membrane

 God abandoned it by never granting it the ability to multiply. Never bled and therefore never sheltered another life, voice never dropped all the way and balls never did at all, couldn’t take another body to do the deed like they tried to take Hers. And failed.

Val had a deeply ingrained desire of taking care of little ones. Never cared much for animals and people hardly made that list either, but the purity of children enchanted him, the unconditional love they had for their parents.

One feels empty without having anyone for themselves, other people have the luxury of producing another human being to fulfill the role when all else fails. Val could take in all the discarded children in the world but none would be able to convince him that he wasn’t their second —or sometimes third- favorite.

 _No matter_ , they all burned at the pit. The lord gave and the lord has taken away. Barbecued kids smoking into Val’s nostrils, it’s a pot roast that he’d gladly eat just to be in their company again. Maybe if his bones weren’t so depleted of meat there wouldn’t be so much space for grief, like the housewives and crippled grandpas like to say. But this is an appetite that can’t be satiated by food —it’s the constant desire of being _full_ , yes, but that particular way of doing it has never worked.

Its limbs were swiss cheese. Val thinks a lot about food for somebody who never craves it.

Its skin bled grease out the pores like pork steaming in the pan, it lifts its ass off the floor and something thicker than water but thinner than discharge drips between its two feet. It runs its hands through its body and can stick its skinny fingers into the holes made by the creatures that ate it from the inside and left it empty to pounder its isolation, it wiggles the bony digits in the perforations, fits four into four openings in its stomach and tries to close a fist, pulling waxy skin inwards the belly button. There’s no squishy gore inside, it feels identical to the outside, but moist with humidity.

Val chokes, neck turns into jelly and bends back with the weight of her head, her body follows and her skull slams into the hard floor like a melon. Legs spread apart and both hands climb down her stomach hole to hole in sets of eight or less, whatever many the fingers could reach into. The meat between her thighs is untouched by the trypophobic nightmare, except for the one that has always been there.

Nothing can be seen through his shut lids, Val feels like if he was to open them he’d be scared by what he saw beyond the hope of repair. He can hear the return of the buzzing, however, this time distant rather than in the very depths of his brain. But approaching. Begins with a slight itch on top of his foot and turns into hundreds and hundreds of small legs climbing up his own, he can hear the swarm move like the rustling leaves of a tree, vibrating with the beating of their fragile wings. The scattered touches move towards the middle, pack themselves so tightly that they take a shape that is, at its core, solid, even if Val could still stick her hand right into it if she desired.

It presses itself against him, overwhelming with sensation from the heat between his legs, the tender skin of his gut, to the tip of the teats. It takes on a voice but Val can’t hear it through the buzzing.

_“What?”_

He asks. Ever Morphing lips made of the abrasive little bodies of locusts brush Val’s ear. The sounds it made could not be interpreted as any words known to the English language, and yet the static turned into comprehensive words for him like bees turn pollen into honey.

He looked for the living lumps to each side of the thing’s excuse for a head and when Val’s hands tried to grab them, his fingers were swallowed into them, lifeforms walking across his skin and burying them inside the body they had made. He had another question

_“Are you god?”_

Another single syllable of static, and then it melts, comes apart, on top of Val’s lying figure as it had never had a form in the first place. They spread skittishly like cockroaches under harsh light, but instead of moving away they squeezed by the dozen into the orifices on Val’s fresh, rushing past one another and squirming into the tightness like a throat trying to down a dry piece of food. Val screamed on the top of his lugs and the locusts that didn’t find a hole for themselves crawled into his mouth, underneath his eyelids, into his ears. A mob collected around his inner tights and soon dissapeared into his sex. Val clawed wildly at the ground, at his own body, spine twisting as he writhed like a sick animal being devoured by maggots. The screams ceased as suddenly as his movement, Val’s knees snapped together and he felt his cunt twitch, came a weak stream of fluid squirted out just as he found himself no longer covered with organisms; they are inside him now.

The hard floor below him turned into the contrasting softness of a thin mattress, he’s still naked like a newborn under the gaze of a winded Josiah. It’s nighttime at this point. Mary is asleep beside them, drifted off into dreamland to the sight of the people she loves entangling their bodies like vines. Val takes Josiah’s face into his hands and pulls him close, whispers into his ear:

_“the static spoke to me”_

 

* * *

 

They caught up on sleep, increasing Val’s hours ever since the day before to about four, and it was all he needed. They jumped out of the bed with their eyes still half-stuck shut and made it up the hills while everyone else in the village remained in their houses, either dormant or wide awake and restless. Mary stayed behind, as the other two would have insisted regardless had she not been blunt from the beginning about her state.

Unlike Beau, Josiah had no reservations about taking the main path alongside the preacher’s deacon. Val did call the boy’s precautions unnecessary, but he wasn’t so sure about this level of confidence — in the end he didn’t say a word, afraid Josiah would have another change of heart if he made things too complex.

Josiah got a lengthier version of Val’s dreams and thoughts when they found themselves far enough from civilization, only listened and made no inputs until the explanations had ended. At that point, they were already digging. He really took his time selecting his words and spoke them as if forced by an authoritarian figure — when your mother tells you to apologize after pushing Timmy into cow manure.

“…I…Think…. That what you doing’s better than doing nothing”

Val would take that as a compliment.

“Just don’t wanna run with what Knoth says anymore myself.”

“That’s fine” He responded, “I’m not like him, you don’t gotta believe in what I say, just want the same things.”

They didn’t make the hole much bigger than it was already, it had to be easy to hide and therefore hard to find, chances are they wouldn’t use it as their only entrance for long. Entering it, they would map out the area they had access to, check for hazards as best as they could, look for other exits and see which ones could be reopened and which ones _should_ be reopened, measuring the risk of giving the enemy too big of an advantage, too many points of access. Once they found the rails the work got significantly easier, they marked important spots as best as they could by placing rocks and sticks in a specific fashion or trying to scratch symbols into the walls. They found out they could go deeper and deeper if they wanted to, but feared the oil in their lamps would run out.

Maybe not by foot. Preferably not by foot. But the miners had a working elevator — they would have to do something about the power if they were even lucky enough to stumble upon it, but the progress they made in two visits had Val feeling confident. The consensus was that if they wanted to speed the process further, they needed more people.

The days that followed they barely spoke to each other, Josiah made it clear he had too much to lose and wouldn’t be caught dead speaking one ill word about Knoth or a single praise aimed at Val; who in turn said _‘fair enough’_ , and just asked for a little bit of time. There were people who shared their viewpoint, they just needed to be better informed.

And that’s precisely what he worked on. From the improvised satires that were acted out in Val’s home to the conversation about taking actual measures, the leap wasn’t so drastic, and with the public execution of another six children fresh in their minds, he wasn’t so shocked that out of a dozen or so people who got to hear about his plans, a dozen or so agreed to take part in them as long as he was the one leading them.

Beau didn’t get to hear a word about it until he demanded it.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

_Dear Abel,_

_I know hes been a little off latly, but thats precisily when you got to set your foot down._ _I hear stories of Val indulging in alcohol and distracting the men and women from their duties by dragging them into his home to do God Knows What. Papa Knoth is too kind to go and demand he fulfills his duty, but Val was given more than enough time to mourn, more than half of us have lost a loved one ever since evil treatened to nest in our womens wombs, and to most of us those have been our actual blood children. Speak some sense into him._

_Paul_

 

 

 

* * *

 

She was scraping wax off the altar when he approached her in the afternoon. The day had been spent dusting the chapel and replacing disfigured candles, a easy task when you keep a schedule, a bit more brutal if you have given the time for the dirt and grime to collect properly and for candle to be set on top of candle by the fool who couldn’t waste their precious time removing the one that had been worn down. People sat in those benches with trousers drenched by incontinence, women bled through their skirts and spotted the wood more than they ever had before, now that females were no longer constantly bearing the weight of new life in their bellies. The other deacons could have taken upon themselves to keep the place tidy, but instead they excused themselves thought their chief’s negligence, used to being told what to do.

At this point, Val preferred to skip the extra step of handing out tasks. Knoth wouldn’t be there to see, but maybe if he heard about how his lackey spent the day on his hands and knees scrubbing the floors to make up for the time lost, Val could hopefully annul any suspicions raised ever since.

People came in and got out of the chapel all day, one lady had been there when Val arrived and remained snotting into a tissue ever since. Probably a mother or sister. She didn’t bother her.

When Beau came in when she was standing behind the pulpit like Sullivan himself so often did, but instead of poisoning the air with bullshit she had a small spatula in her hand, hunched over candlewax that had to be carefully removed without damaging the wood. Val saw him march in through her light eyelashes, but pretended not to until he was standing before her.

“Can we talk?”

Val stopped what she was doing, took a deep raspy breath and glanced down at him. She was taller by default, but Beau was now two extra steps below her, down the short platform Val stood on.

“I’m busy kid. It’s gonna have to wait.”

He frowned, the gears in his little head taking a moment to turn properly and process the why of the cold reception. The crying woman sat to the right of the room had gone quiet too, for the first time since she got there Val saw her raise her head ever so slightly and saw a glimpse of her eyes through her hair. Clearly, she felt like she was caught in the middle of something, and that’s the last thing Val wanted to leave as an impression at times like these.

Val went back to scrapping. Beau tried to recover from his grand entrance.

“…It’s about the leak. Jaron send me to look at it.”

“Oh” She set the spatula down. The woman sniffed and lowered her face towards her lap again “ _’Course_ , through here.”

They both walked into the storage room, not only past the door but as far from it as they could, they stood under the dim orange lighting that creeped through a dingy window and the conversation continued as harsh whispers.

“You’re still doing stuff with the mines” He said.

“Yes, of course, you did good showing that to me. Thank you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Val was a little dumbfounded.

“…That I was gonna use them?  I thought that was implied.”

“No“ The young man shook his head, he looked embarrassed as if caught making  ado about nothing, for a moment Val thought the conversation would have an abrupt end, but he digressed. “You said you was going to let me help out.”

She didn’t want to be rough on him, but this conversation was worn out to the bone and there was only so many ways the same thing could be explained before they ran out of different words to use.

Had this been a week ago —a few days ago- had Val still been alone in her plans to pursue something Else, or simply still sulking in her grief altogether, her reaction to his persistence would have been very different. Patience used to be a virtue she saved for the children in their most frustrating phases of life, only recently did she begin to feel that others deserved the benefit of doubt. Her hand crossed the little space separating the two of them, landing gently on the base of his neck.

_“Beau”_

“I’m very, very grateful”

“And when I know for certain that I can keep you safe, I’ll come get you”

_“But we ain’t quite there yet”_

The boy listened attentively, his dark eyes went from wide to halved, staring at his own two feet as the words sunk in. Finally, he nodded, adding only one last request for reassurance:

“You wouldn’t just leave me here right? If you managed to get out of this place for good.”

“Never.” She was honest. “I wouldn’t leave a soul behind if that could be done.”

In fact, if the entirety of Temple Gate came to join her side, this could all be solved in a matter of minutes. The fact Val and the others were the weaker force against these men, women, and the Monster who put their children to death, was baffling. The fact she had gone along with it for so long was baffling.

He was about to leave, satisfied with as little as a promise, when Val tightened her grip on his shoulder ever so slightly, the boy turned back to her expectantly.

“Could you do one last thing for me?”

“What?”

“Simeon—I need you to ask him something

“What is it?”

Mouth opened to speak, but Val felt like she couldn’t just spurt out whatever words and expect Beau to follow through without either making a mistake or making assumptions. She holds up a finger and darts her eyes over the room, looking right past boxes and shelves as if what she looked for was palpable.

“Ask him if the little bottles Knoth has him bring from the big city would be safe for a pregnant woman to take.”

Beau blinked “Who’s pregnant?”

“Don’t matter”

“Is it you?”

“You know damn well it isn’t.”

“Is it Mary?”

“Can't you just do what I’m telling you? Just don’t say I asked, even if he insists.”

Beau pursed his lips, exhaled through his nose.

“Alright.”


	4. 06/17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***TRIGGER WARNING pretty explicit sexual content involving a 19 year old character

Next time they met in the tunnels there were five of them. The lady was a widower whose husband drank poison after the death of her three-year-old little boy, she told Val all about wine and how to grow mushrooms from bull manure. The two men were brothers-in-law, one lost a wife and an unborn daughter, the other lost a sister and a niece; they were both lethargic with the weight of their tragedy, unlike the widow who hid it behind crude jokes which laughed at hysterically all on her own.

They came better prepared with sources of light and bottled water, a crowbar and a pickaxe to make it through collapsed passageways, every so often they stopped and scribbled down on a rough map, however as it turns out the way was quite linear and there wasn’t a need to stray from the path they were given, exploration wasn’t amongst their goals, which were to; find at least one alternative exit, get the power back up and running down there, and pick and set up in a comfortable place. They didn’t have to thrive, just find solace for an indeterminate amount of time.

And they never talked about things in the long-term. That’s not how they were taught how to live.

The night after that, there were seven people in total. At that point they separated into groups to meet at the hills, thinking better safe than sorry even if the kind of gamble they were doing with their lives might have called for a full disregard for caution already. Another man, another woman, a butcher and a cook, from different establishments. These two were eager to serve and didn’t waste their saliva in off-commentary, but they did speak about how glad they were to be doing this and thanked Val to bits when the night was over before they scattered to get to their homes.

They met three consecutive days, surprisingly with great excitement from all Involved. Josiah asked at some point if the lack of sleep didn’t get to them—didn’t make them feel a little off. They shook their heads, even looked at each other as if the question was preposterous.

Many said they’d rather not sleep ever again. Val asked if that was because of the dreams.

They shook their heads yes, Val then asked if they hadn’t had visions while awake as well.

The widow spoke first, as if she had been waiting for someone else to confirm that she wasn’t completely mad, mentions of a bright light and deafening screeching that left a buzz in her ears, doing things she didn’t recall.

The other woman vaguely agreed, the men seemed more hesitant to share.

What he told Josiah when they first made their way over to the mines, about the dispersing ghost that filled his ears with static, Its simple message that changed his viewpoint entirely; Val now told the group.

After he was done with the tale, the man without a sister nor niece asked if he had met with it again since then, Val paused, took a deep breath, and then said yes.

 

* * *

 

 

Earlier that same day, Val met him in the cabins by the lake. They saw each other less often and further away from the townsfolk each time, Beau had fortunately cut back on his recklessness and kept himself from knocking on her door in bright daylight— his childish system of notes surprisingly continued to be used, Val herself had been doing some writing in her own time.

The boy was already there when she arrived, coming through the backdoor of the larger cabin that had it’s back to the trees, Val would later leave through there as well. The area seemed empty from any other soul but she grew increasingly paranoid with each passing day. At least from the window you couldn’t smell the artificial stench of the lake, only appreciate its beauty under orange tones.

First thing he did was hold up a bottle of distilled liquor at her, give it a little insistent wiggle. She took it, dragged a crate over and sat facing him.

“You talk with Simeon?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“It will cost you, but he’ll do it.”

Val said that was fine. She had no other use for the money she had. Beau went quiet, extended his hand to take the bottle from her and take some sips of his own. The other watched him with her elbows resting on her knees, fingers entangled underneath her chin.

“Something’s the matter?”

His pupils darted from the glassless window besides his head to the person in front of him, then back.

“Simeon said… He could help me leave if I wanted to. That I would just need money and a alibi.”

“You want money?”

 _“No”_ He frowned, having to physically react to the borderline-accusatory statement despite how calmly it had been said. The opening of the bottle hit his front tooth and Beau licked it over, giving up on his drink for now “I have some money as well, I’m saying we take that and leave with him next time he’s gotta travel.”

“ _Your dad_ has money.”

“I don’t care, I’ll leave him penniless if that’s how it’s gotta be.”

“Would you really do that?”

“Val, doing anything for the people here is like trynna fix a broken leg with a band aid.”

Suddenly, it sounded like the conversation had expanded beyond Paul. Val took the swing as gracefully as she could, a look of distaste in her eyes but keeping harsher words to herself.

“You’re too young to understand compassion.”

“Don’t act like you some selfless being either.

She was far from it and there was little in that department Beau could say that would leave any wounds stinging.

“I’m not leaving this place. I want to offer all the people here an alternative path.”

“You’re starting your own fucking religion now?”

“No, far from that.”

“So you just gonna do everything the gospel tells you not to.”

There’s a tightness always present in Val’s jaw, but it released in that moment both due to the alcohol taking action and to how accurately Beau had managed to resume her entire goal in less than ten words. For the first time she saw her idea portrayed in a much less Fantastical and more crude and stubborn fashion and it hadn’t even need to be severely twisted over and around for it to happen.

She had a mouthful of the liquor that had to sit on her tongue longer than she’d like, Val swallowed it down reluctantly but still managed to dribble a little over herself because of the chuckle that needed out. She bit the tip of her tongue,  wiped the mess on her chin with her sleeve.

_“When you put it like that.”_

Beau  caved, they both shared a good laugh, another swig, and then he crawled off of the chair he sat on to pull her slacks off. He had been drinking for long before Val arrived.

The bottle passed back and forth between them one more time, Val chose to hop off the crate and sat on the ground, only half upright on top of her elbows, just so she could keep drinking without drowning in it.

“I’m not trying to prove anything to him”

She picked the conversation back up, Beau’s eyes blinked up but shut again very quickly, he wrapped his arms around her thighs and stuck his prickly chin into her cunt with more force.

“I aint gonna wave that baby infront of him when it comes out like a flag, _youknow_ ”

“I don’t care what it does”

She tensed her hips, drew her knees higher up and rest her feet on his shoulders, Beau provided no answer except the wet sounds his tongue made as it trailed up and down the slit between her legs.

“If it eradicates everything it will have something new to replace us with”

“Probably something better”

Beau raised his head above her pubis, he didn’t get out much beyond a sniff and a ‘ _Val_ ’ before she grabbed a handful of the hair on top of his head and shoved his head back into where it had been. She told him to stick his tongue out and maneuvered it whatever way felt best. Her lungs filled with air and Val stared into Beau’s widened eyes while she continued to talk relentlessly.

“If the coming of the enemy can’t be helped why do we go to these lengths to stop it”

“Why do we try to control everything”

“Nature, ourselves, each other”

“he did this just so he could fuck a bunch of women”

“think that misshapen chunk of lard could get his cock wet otherwise?

“he’s _appalling_ ”

“he _turns my fucking stomach_ ”

“To even think about him, _it’s enough to make me gag_ ”

Val’s fist opened up over the back of Beau’s head, forced his mouth around the stiff, twitching inch sitting on top of her sex, he coughed up pure mucus that collected in the back of his throat before being reduced to groans again.

Sounds that put Val back in the rooms with the bunk-beds, as soon as winter hit, one would become sick, and the rest would shortly follow. Lines of children coughing and being served hot tea with honey.

Most of the years that was a uneventful period, only every so often someone’s fever would burn too hot and Val would stress and lose sleep over it until it came down. He would picture himself having even one of those kids passing away under his care, while he slept or whilst out doing chores _or worse_ —under his careful watch, sweating away and blazing like coal in a bed too big for its small diseased body. He lived in fear of it, he demanded they stayed warm and washed their hands properly before eating. If even one of them was gone, he couldn’t imagine what he’d do.

It remained a mystery how he was capable of slicing into their necks the way he did, and how he found any strength not to cut into his own as soon as he was done.

He thrusted his pelvis into Beau’s nose, heard him whine and maybe something like cartilage dislodging. Val was curled with his tailbone on the hard floor, forearm wrapped around the boy’s head, feeling his tongue lying on top of his groin as it pulsated in climax. He looked up from the greasy roots of his head; in the corner of Val’s vision the world outside the cabin’s window was bright head, no hills or trees or clouds to be seen. At the other end of Beau’s frigid body was It.

Like looking into a intricate painting, its form humanoid like it had been when it presented itself the first time, but conjured up of too many details to be absorved and much less comprehended by the human eye. Now he heard the familiar buzzing, but it seemed as if it had been there from the start, so ingrained in Val’s reality he would have learned to ignore it. Beau had never taken a single article of clothing off and yet he was nude as an infant before his eyes, limp, backside up in the air being plowed like a bitch by the heaving cryptid. It hunched powerful over his body, had it had a need as trivial as breathing, Val would be have been able to feel that hit him in the face.

They entered an awfully unfair staring contest that Val was bound to lose. It had proven itself to be a tease; while Beau couldn’t even get her to keep quiet while they fucked, _It_ knocked all words and composure out of her simply by being present, erased all other thoughts from her mind, Val just wanted it to fuck her until her insides were burning raw from friction, she wanted for pleasure to turn into agony and eventually turn into nothing when all her nerve endings became dulled and used.

It spoke, Val listened until Beau broke lose from her grip, had her drop fully to the floor with a slam to her chest.

“ ** _Don’t ever fucking do that again”_**

He shouted.

Val stared wordlessly up at him, mouth agape and hands being held up snakingly in front of her face, expecting maybe another blow. Beau was fully dressed again but still drained of all color, his face glistened with sweat and her own body fluids. She looked into his face searching after an alternative version of what had just been witnessed, but found him to be as dazed and disoriented as herself.

Val looked outside, it was dark and she had to leave soon for the mines.

They both got up, tidied up, Val told Beau she’d give him the money Simeon had demanded first thing the next day. He complied, reluctant. Before they parted ways, she apologized, she held him, kissed him. He let it happen but didn’t receive any of the affection welcomingly.

“I’ll make things better soon” Val said.

“Please do.” He answered and stormed off into the forest.

 

* * *

 

 

Val looked around at the faces dispersed around him, leaned against walls, sat on top of rocks, cross-legged on the floor even. He was squatting with a hand around the handle of his shovel, for support, it standing on its own with the tip dipped into the dirt.

In the variety of expressions -from shock to arousal to indifference- there was always something that they shared, a hint of familiarity. No one had seen what Val had seen, but they had felt precisely what he had felt, had only been unable to put it into words, or rather failed to even try in fear of judgement.

He looked up at Josiah, standing next to him with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He asked:

“What did it say?”

“It told me to _let it happen_.”

They were done for the day. Left the mines in pairs only so no one would get lost. Val and Josiah lived close to one another and so made the trip together.

In the way, he asked him for the details Val had spared, the ones that related to his wife. Val mentioned nothing of his and Beau’s conversation, just calling it drunken chatter and nothing else, but the man didn’t believe it.

They talked about Mary’s health, about the symptoms she showed that generally turned into a ticket to live with the Scalled if you did not perish before being found out. He told him about witnessing the exact same signs of disease on Sullivan before being phased out of the preacher’s circle of trustees and replaced with Paul, he only knew he treated himself for it for a couple of weeks, and as everyone could see, was alive and well.

Josiah was reluctant to feed into any hope, but he did thank Val for the effort. Said humorously that he was starting to see the perks of having him around, of being as close as they were allowing themselves to become.

Val said he was doing that for Mary, not for him.

And straight away added that he would do the exact same thing if Josiah had been ill instead.

“Each of you are of immense value to me.”

He said at the door of his home. Josiah made some sort of noise with his throat, then nodded.

“Thanks Val. You too.” The man stated, simply, and then went his own way.

Val bathed as he usually did, then slept way past sunrise for the first time in days. Past breakfast hour, past lunch hour, he dreams grotesque dreams of lust and carnage, but where nothing is beyond his control; where everything is exactly as planned despite how chaotic, because that was precisely the goal. It’s raw human emotion and desire, they relieve their hatred onto their enemies and then relieve their overwhelming joy on one another without shame, they never fear death because whilst alive, they made of their lives exactly what they wanted it to be.

He Is shaken to the core when awakened, so violently that Val slams his elbow into a wall and has to curl up in pain in his mattress, clenching his teeth and moaning. Someone had knocked, but not downstairs—on the frame of his bedroom door, rather, open wide as it usually was. He had not picked the habit of locking his house yet, despite knowing that would have to change.

Still naked and entangled in his sheets, making no effort to rise, Val looks at the visitor, perpetually hunched over to -for some reason he couldn’t comprehend- attempt to lower herself to everyone else’s level. He grimaces and says:

“You can’t just barge in whenever you please.”

Two and a half steps of Marta’s long legs are enough to close the gap between her and Val’s bed, grip his arm and drag him out of it like either a cheating wife or a freeloading child.


	5. 06/19

Val stumbled at Marta’s feet, arm twisted in the old woman’s hand. She’s one whose strength topped most men at the temple, who stood far beyond six feet tall and was always dressed with cloth down to the ankles and wrists, looking like an ancient pillar draped over with fabric, greys and earth tones from head to toe. Marta was never warm, was never welcoming, she did things with a calmness that had been partially passed down to Val, that put her in the made-up pedestal she was in. People didn’t venerate either of them but they thought they held much more responsibility than either did.

Usually, that worked out for the worse. Marta’s every mistake had been picked at and thrown back in her face throughout her live, Val witnessed it and now lived it. He wished he could have done more to help.

She pulled him up, grabbed both his shoulders and looked into Val’s face, or rather past it. He had to balance with the tips of his toes, legs glued together and hands occupied trying to retain any form of decency in front of his elder. She paid no mind to his nudity, in fact it had become difficult to tell what Marta’s eyes were ever focusing on as of late.

“You’re conspiring against me”

“all out of your own free will-- you’re the beasts and the whore all in one and _you’re breaking my heart Val_ ”

He swallowed with a throat dry as the desert and whispered, “I’m not conspiring against you.”

Marta throws him back into the ground, the floorboards all creak underneath Val’s weight, the unvarnished wood rips into his elbows and knees and splinters dig homes into his skin to later be found. He takes his time getting up; Marta must be standing right there in the room but she didn’t pose a fatal threat.

He hears her voice over his shoulder, low and hoarse like someone who spent a lifetime eating their eggs still in the shells.

“This is a suicide pact with the devil that you are signing with blood, a rope around the neck would be faster and less painful.”

Val reaches for the sheets in his bed, tries to wrap them around his shoulders.

“Then get me some rope.”

Marta slaps him on the back of his skull and sends Val staggering to the left like a toddler learning how to walk, willingly or not he gives up on being modest and instead lets gravity pull him sideways into the wall, uses it to support himself over to the door that led out the room. Val’s voice is cracking as he’s blurting out:

_“Crazy fucking rag you don’t going treat me this way you’re not welcome here”_

He’s walking down the stairs, trying to get away as he hears Marta following calmly behind. His bare feet miss a step, heel catching on an edge and nearly sending him spine-down on top of them, but the woman catches him underneath the arms and sets him back up to continue down his path. Val goes on:

_“Don’t touch me don’t dare touch me”_

At the ground floor now, he stomps off and slumps down in a chair, drags it up against the table with a hand over the stinging spot on his scalp. Marta leans on the railing of the stairs, observing. He remains with his back to her but neck turned enough so she’s visible in his peripheral.

Marta’s fists tighten around the wood, it gives out a squeak. She goes on:

“Get outta here then”

“Leave me, leave Father-- you made your feelings towards us clear and you won’t be missed”

“We awful weary of your insolence”

Marta comes forth, and as she rubs her eyes her whole sagging face is being tugged with the motion. Val barely allows her to open her mouth back up to insult him further before pulling a thick glob of mucus from his throat and spiting it at her feet, immediately setting her off from what seemed like it could have been a civil comedown.

A handful of his hair is grabbed and Val has his face shoved into the table. His ass shoots up from its seating, chair tipping and then falling backwards. He tries kicking back at Marta’s ankles, but she might as well have her legs stuck in concrete blocks.

“ _rebellion is a sin of divination, presumption is as iniquity and idolatry”_ Marta says.

Val sucks air through gritted teeth, writhing under her grasp so the table shakes and tips like the chair did, except it manages to find it’s stability again as the woman pressed the other’s head further into it. He spews back:

_“Whoever knows the right thing to do but fails to do it, **sins** ”_

“You believe you are in the right?”

“That ain’t what I say.”

Marta takes one of sandal off and strikes at his behind. Val’s jaw clenches so tightly he heard the friction between his teeth echo around his brain. His body jolts, surprise by the most part rather than agony. The pain only _really_ begun after the tenth strike.

His elbows rose, palms both planted down and trying to fight the wobbliness in the knees. In church and in the teachings, they give the kids time to breath between each hit, Marta did not and relentlessly layered blow on top of blow, as she would only ever do while completely blinded by anger. Otherwise, Val had never seen her do any harm onto the children.

He props his chin up as best as he can and stares at whatever is right in front of him, the faded green walls and dusty cupboards, wincing and gasping synchronized with what happened behind him. There is buzzing in his head and he yearns for it to grow louder, like the approaching swarm of insects when they crawled over to him like a horny vixen. Fortunately, it is kind, it is there.

Like puffing opium clouds, it’s an increasing euphoria that sends tingles down his spine and dips his body entirely in warm amniotic fluid. The Buzzing is his new silence; or better yet its mother’s voice coming through the walls of her stomach, indistinguishable hums that calm and excite him all at once, encourage him to grow strong, grow hard, get out, he wants to see the face of this angel that sheltered this fragile prototype. It has always been there, Val’s hearing had only been too underdeveloped to identify it, but birth day now neared.

With the world, the sky, the crops and the sea, they will be incinerated and the ashes shall act like the fertilizer and the seeds to whatever comes after them.

Marta stops. Val stands perfectly still save the rise and fall of his ribs and deep breaths pulled into his nostrils.

“I do this because I love you.”

She says. That bony fist that had been wrapped around his hair unfolds and caresses the exposed side of Val’s face, brushes away the strands of blond covering his wild looking eyes. It rests on his shoulder for a moment, then parts. There’s a couple of footsteps and then the opening and closing of his door. Before it shuts, Marta says:

“Lock this.”

Val will pull himself together again whenever he’s ready. It takes a gentle brush of his ass against the table as he turns around to feel the horrible sting, like a severe sunburn stretching from the top of his thighs up to the tailbone. He drops to his hands and knees without trying to take another step.

Begs for it to touch him. For the feeling to go on.

He’s wet, groin is pulsating like it has a heart of its own, the head peeking under the fold of his pubis is red and swollen and demands attention that Val doesn’t believe he can provide. He reaches back and grinds into his hand, thrusts fingers in and out and with shut eyes he pretends it watches him do it.

 

* * *

 

 

That story was also told in the meeting, after things were finally settled.

They took the stairs, sent six out of twelve people down, way down, got to a hole in the floor with an unnervingly decayed and long ladder extending into pitch darkness, out of the six people, three are determined to go down there, Val amongst them because he always insisted.

With each encounter they grow more found of each other and of him, especially of him; they will pretend it isn’t true but they’d be like blind mice without a leader—All their lives they could trust one person to tell right from wrong and that is a habit you don’t break in one night, or a week; some are actively searching for autonomy, (Josiah is one, The widow another, perhaps why they went down that ladder so readily) others are too terrified to worry about their independence, they put their lives in Val’s hands and trust him with them.

Which makes it difficult on them to watch as the three descend. What if they never come back up?

They get to hear about water, how they are ankle-deep in a still pool, before the trio moves out of the reach of everyone’s ears. Then, they only had one another, the system of wiring trailing the short ceiling guiding and the heavy generator battery in Josiah’s bag.

There hadn’t been a moment of joy such as the one they shared when a lever was pulled and the power roared back into life in a very long time. Smiles cutting through all their faces. There could be a faulty battery or a faulty engine and there could have been both.

They go back, and take the elevator to meet with the rest of the group.

“When time comes, and we are down there, we can cut the power and be left at peace to witness it.”

“Witness what?”

Val hesitated.

“The child.”

Silence. The topic still a solid taboo as it would remain for a couple more days.

Val found himself sharing every intimate detail he before kept so secretive, safe under hundreds of feet, they grew more open and honest just as the party became more packed. Twenty something now, even if they could never all make it all at once or every single night.

Strangely, not an ounce of his being was in any way concerned with treachery. They would be by his side through the very end, traitors and liars to Knoth, but genuine, loyal followers to Val.

He told them that as well.

Fear was still prevalent, expected as it had been instilled deep much like their lack of agency. Val insisted there was nothing to be afraid of.

“We have no control over what happens. Don’t see that as reason for crisis, it’s liberating”

“It’s when human tries to tinker with history that things go awry.”

He would say, and eventually even the least well-read interpreted his words as intended.

They were allowed to speak about their children, about their loved ones, about each other, let out their uncertainties and grief one last time before they all agreed those might as well be the first nights of their lives.

At some point Val stated that in there, they could do whatever they wanted. And soon, that would be everywhere.

Someone asked if they planned for a world with no Law, He pretended not to understand the question.

“If I can do whatever I want, I could also kill you.”

Val sat on top of a short elevation of stone, the ample room of rock and dirt they now made their way into every single nigh, ever since it was agreed enough of the mines had been uncovered. His question echoed uncomfortably off the walls; Val was in a way proud not to see repulsion on any of his followers faces, if anything, a healthy amount of curiosity.

“Do you want me dead?”

He asked back at the man. It’s the father who lost his child and wife, a man deeply troubled who earlier sobbed as he recounted the dread following him every day, and wherever he went.

He said No.

“Do you want anyone here dead, or hurt?”

He said No.

Val chuckles.

“So, there’s that.”

They leave before sunrise, split into pairs that take different roads into different entrances of the town, Val and Josiah finish the night together, as they usually do.

And as it had become the usual for a week now, Val walks past his own home and enters Josiah’s instead, in the kitchen they prepare the syringe with the penicillin Beau provided and go upstairs, Mary takes her shot always first thing in the morning, Val administers it.

This time when they arrive in the bedroom Mary is curled on the floor, resting with her shoulder against the couple’s wardrobe. Her mouth-sores had gone down but she looks as ill as she’s ever been, naked from the waist down saving from socks that had soaked up in sweat, holding her underwear darkened red in her hand, few droplets of the same color trailing the way she made across the room.

“I didn’t wanna stain the bed” She whispers, a hint of humor and a soft wave of her ruined garment is all she could manage.

She says she’s sorry, and for some reason they all break down into tears.

 

* * *

 

 

They cleaned her up, assured everything was fine. It wasn’t her fault, above all, she did nothing wrong. Still covered in a thin layer of dust and sweat, they bother to wipe her down with a towel first and force some water down the woman’s throat, despite her claims of being too nauseous to ingest anything. They put her to bed, Val made her company while Josiah got clean, left only after he had gotten into bed with his wife.

Josiah didn’t touch her, only laid there on top of the sheets staring at the back of Mary’s head with a pair of small, red eyes.

“I didn’t drain the tub, you can use it if you want.”

He offered.

“I’ll wash at home.”

Val said, gave his ankle a squeeze and left the room, and the home, taking with him only the unused syringe. By then it was broad daylight and Val marches, as he is, not to his house, but somewhere else. Keeps grasping the shoulders of people he remembered having even mildly pleasant conversations with, he’s demanding for Simeon. Simeon. Where is he. It’s urgent. I’m the head deacon, I am Val, I have served Sullivan Knoth for years and I demand that you tell me where Simeon is.

He’s lead to many dead ends, most people say nothing, scuttle away. Val is out of his usual attire, in the slacks and blouse he wore in their reunions, brick red and dark brown stains from both weeks ago and as fresh as last night’s. Some look at him in shock and worry, others judge and mock from a distance. Nobody dared to ask. Only two or four point him into any sort of direction, babbled guesses at best. One girl calls his name from several feet away, standing on the porch with her arm outstretched like an arrow sign on a road. Upwards. A covered bridge-like structure connecting the top floors of two barns, Simeon is looking down at Val with his mouth agape, takes him a second to break out of his trance and take off running.

Val pushes the people out of his way, crosses over to the opposite side of the platform Simeon was in and follows the building itself closely in the direction he took, makes it past the door just in time to bump right into him.

Simeon is a boy. Much like Beau. Only a couple of years older and with a bit more knowledge—his mother took him from his runaway father just before he turned ten, time enough to get a good grasp on the world outside. Because of that, he was arrogant, a snobbish brat with a superiority-complex who called Val a slut and a tranny to Beau.

“Get back up that ladder”

But he’s short. And he’s weak. Especially after the trip he would have made into the city.

Val turns him by the collar of his shirt and slams Simeon back into the ladder he came down from.

“Fuck no”

Val holds up the syringe in his fist, needle pointed into his face.

_“Get back up the ladder”_

Simeon grimaces and does what he’s told. Val is right behind him, a hand constantly pushing up on his ass to get him to move a little faster.

They’re alone in the second floor of the barn; them, some crates and the smell of chicken shit that had for long been cooking under rays of sunlight that came through the simple squared windows.

Val backs Simeon up into the corner opposite to where he stood before, a hand squeezing the young man’s throat against the wall behind him and the other one still holding the syringe up. Before Val can say anything, Simeon does.

“I fucking knew it was for you”

“ ** _Shhh_** , did you give him poison? Did you try to poison us?”

“Him who? Beau? No! It’s _just_ penicillin!”

“My friend lost her baby because of this, you said it was safe”

“I— _what_? I didn’t say shit, but I think it is, it should be, I dunno what you talking about”

Simeon chokes on his last couple of words, Val shifts his arm and forces him up on the tips of his toes. He coughs, puts his hands to Val’s chest trying to push him away. Val almost feels light-headed, a level of anger that borderlines as embarrassing.

“Was it or wasn’t it safe?”

“ _Idunnoimnotadoctor!”_

“He asked you! Beau asked you that!”

“What?”

“ _Whether or not it was safe_ ”

“ _Hedidn’t!”_

They pause. Val chews the information he was given in dead silence and Simeon keeps squirming in his grip, eyes set on the needle near his face. There’s a small give and he gasps desperately for air, yet not free.

He didn’t think Simeon was trustworthy or worthwhile, but neither did Val believe he was invested enough in his dislike to jeopardize him, Beau, and possibly himself.

“I swear man”

“I thought it was for you”

Simeon repeats himself.

Val’s eyes had been looking past him, they immediately shift back to the point of focus.

“I’m not even sick.”

The younger man’s lips part, just gawking at the face directly in front of him as if forgetting how to form sentences. Time passes, the feeling in the room reminds Val of when he was in the cabins with Beau, after they had broken out of a daze and Beau split from between Val’s thighs like he seen his future printed on his skin and hated it. The look in his face. Of downing terror. The need to get away as fast as possible.

Val spits into Simeon’s open mouth and lets him go.

Turns on his heel and doesn’t stay to watch him contort and crawl about on the floor slobbering on his sleeves, making a scene where he heaves and curses Val’s name with words only a city boy would know.

 


	6. VAL

It was decided they should lay low, a message that had passed from mouth to ear, discreetly in ration lines, notes underneath doors or whispers as you bump into each other in the fields. She locked herself in her home, leaving only to collect water, food when necessary and to check on the chapel like she was supposed to. The week was reminiscent of that which followed the massacre of her children, long afternoons sitting at home carving irregular lines into wood, pulling skin from around her fingernails, cooking and not eating.

Rains had begun to pour, day on day off. Instead of baking half naked in the dry heat like before Val found herself setting down bowls and buckets to catch what made through the old roof. One day, when Beau finally showed up after so long, she joked about having an actual leak this time around that could use the fixing.

No one else visited, and despite that being the plan Val couldn’t help but feel discarded. She was missing the opium, tried to make some cigarettes out of old tea leaves but it felt like smoking pure paper. It’s the most crushing of comedowns, being forced to go from doing so much to nothing at all. There were mornings _slash_ afternoons  _slash_ evenings where she woke up and questioned if it hadn’t all been a dream.

It’s what it feels like as you watch everything phase back into the ordinary. Sitting face to face at that small dining table, they had conversations like they used to have; about work, neighbor’s gossip, stories they had read. In a way things were better now than they were before, Beau might have had a scare and realized the depth of their relationship— he was more caring, more mature, wanted to hear her speak and hold her hand.

Val not only thanked him for his support at a time such as that, but also apologized for her behavior in the last few weeks.

“’Course” He would say “I know you were just”

“busy.”

They both danced around the subject, he arrived at her house days earlier readily filling the silent gaps of their conversation with trivialities to avoid having it brought to light. Val would love to know whether he wanted to pretend the faction had never existed or if he just had a lot of bad to say and would rather _not_. She knew they could have been more reserved, and knew no matter how well they did that, word would spread even if not even one turned out to be true. Everyone was so bitter, gnawing each other’s hands off since months, trying pin people against their own, relieving stress of real struggles through making smaller problems seem bigger than they were. Picking scabs.

Something triggered Beau to speak tonight, Val then concluded the boy had been craving for this more than herself; he did it with no encouragement, no insistence, a sigh followed the “busy” and he would have definitely say her eyes forced his tongue if he was given the chance to put the blame on something. Beau blurts:

“So did you stop with that thing you was doing?”

She darts her eyes from his fidgety hands to his tense face. “I can’t say for sure.”

“Hm”

“did you hear some of your people been going missing?”

Val froze, a weight in her stomach did a full flip. “ _My people_?”

“It’s what they saying, I dunno how much is fact.”

“They don’t know who my people are.” She assured to herself most of all. Beau had opened this door and he was now keen on not letting the topic float away from his reach, he see’s the uncertainty on her face, feels like he might be on to something—not information, he doesn’t care what they did and tells himself he don’t even want to hear about it, rather something that could be done so they could bury this strange period of their story and either move forwards together or go in their separate ways. Beau, of course, leaned heavily on one of the outcomes rather than the other.

He whispers her name and hunches forth, reaching across the table for Val’s wrists and grabbing them in both his hands to keep her attention. “You know, people are talking all kinds of things”

“They a hair’s length from breaking your door down”

“they saying you trynna get the devil born, that you suck satan dick, is getting husbands and wives to live in sin”

“hurts me to hear those things.”

It’s not funny in the slightest but a chuckle comes out of her. Val’s head flops to the side with that weakened grin still printed on her lips, her cold hands turn palm down and wrap themselves around Beau’s forearm, watches her own digits trace veins faintly visible through his tight skin. Beau squeezes her, trying to get her attention back. Val shakes her head but he moves on.

“After the thing with Simeon”

Her eyes shoot up, hands contract into weak fists.

“yeah, that scene you two did. Did its rounds.”

It was only optimistic of her to assume Simeon would keep to himself. He had much to lose by opening his mouth even if not quite as much as she did. As long as that door remained in its hinges Val had to conclude he picked which information to brag about carefully, but perhaps more important than the aftermath, had been the events that lead to the discourse. Her grabbing people in the street, running covered in dry dirt into a building with a syringe in her hand—a small detail but that realistically, one or two people would have noticed.

She tried not to think about it.

“Val, im sorry, but I don’t think you can keep this going.”

The periodical splashes of water dropplets into the containers scattered upstairs kept breaking her concentration, Val could easily lose the track of time whilst looking into Beau’s eyes had it not been for it. She could tell he had had her in his mind. He was incapable of moving on with his life with the uncertainty of whether or not she would be in it and this was the moment he thought he could turn things around. Val’s followers had similar looks in their faces when they were spoken directly at, but unlike them Beau had remained set in his own beliefs, and he believed he knew what was best for Val better than she did.

And he’s stubborn.

“What do you think I should do?” She asked.

“Let’s close that hole.”

They got up from their chairs, grabbed coats and rain boots and stepped outside. In the weather as it was, in the already late hour as it was, they would walk all the way up to the hills and they wouldn’t return until the job was done. He barely speaks a word, Val was hesitant and not only did he not want to rub salt on such a fresh wound but he feared a change of mind were he to encourage further reflection, that’s why it couldn’t wait another single day, Val didn’t look all there and he, admittedly, had to take advantage of it.

She tells him all as they march up the steep trail midst the tall grass, boots sinking up to an inch into the wet dirt. The rain is a consistent, weak stream, it’s not the noise it makes alone that has them raising their voices but the sound that echoes in their ears as it hit the thick hoods over their heads.

“We have one reliable entrance, at the very top, it’s the same hole you help me dig”

She points. They move.

It wouldn’t be a clean job, a few rocks had been thrown around the opening to block it from sight, but they served as a thin veil rather than a locked door, the whole area around it shone wet and the slope in which they had dug formed almost a perfect funnel to collect the storms from the last few days. Val remembered the ankle-high water in the engine room. She turns to Beau.

“We activated the elevator, I shouldn’t leave it as it is.”

“Why not?”

“Josiah stole the battery from somewhere, would be best to take it back.”

Beau curses God’s name under his breath, he doesn’t want to argue and finally gestures at the hole after stomping aimlessly in the spot out of frustration. Val hunches down and slips into the mines, Beau follows.

Val had promised they didn’t need to bring anything because the group carefully left spare lamps, oil and shovels right across from the entrance, and as they go in that’s the first thing they reach for, rush for it, especially as Val is hit with the realization that the lamps might had been drowned in mud at this point. Grabbed by the handles, they come off the group with one steady pull and a wet sound, are lightly shaken to rid of the excess stuck to their bottoms. Luckily, one of them still worked. Val grabbed a shovel, Beau commented:

“We don’t need that now.”

“Look around Beau, I honestly wouldn’t know.” She lets him carry the shovel is that would ease the boy’s consciousness, begins to lead him through the tunnels until they found the rails, looking now for the elevator. While walking in front of him with light dangling from her raised hand, Val decided to ask:

“Who went missing?”

“I don’t remember the names, everybody’s just saying they saw them with you.”

“How many?”

“About… Five people… It depends who you ask.”

The room with the elevator is a step above ground level thanks to a wooden platform, yet Val saw how the thick sludge was almost taking that over, creeping up the corners. She sighs a sigh of relief when the lever is cranked and the chains behind the steel fencing begin to pull the elevator up. Val looks at Beau standing quietly to her left. He’s looking down at the lift’s shaft with bulging eyes. His pupils tremble and slowly rise up to meet hers, their gazes locked until the machine opened its doors for them.

This time, it is Val who politely waves him in “After you.”

Hesitantly, he does. The doors close with them inside and the couple begins their descent.

“What else y’all did around here?”

“Cleared it out. Mostly. Made it habitable.”

“Oh.”

She watches him chew his lip from the corner of her vision, his boyish eyes looking around and then up at the dim light above their heads powered by the engine’s energy. Val holds the lamp in both hands and blows the flame in it out.

“…Why?”

“Huh?”

“What the plan was?”

Val tilted her head from side to side, the tips of her finger tapping the surface of the warm vial in her hands. “Mary should have had the baby here.”

“Why?”

“Because then Knoth would not need to know about it.”

She feels his eyes burning into her cheek, Val turns her own face to take a took look at him; a pretty boy with a couple of hairs sprouting out of his chin and upper lip, a full mouth and big eyes with long, dark eyelashes, despite the open pores and the leftover baby-fat, he was still the nicest looking thing amongst those his age, and sometimes even amongst the girls.

“What about the others?”

Val blinks. “What do you mean?”

“Why did the elevator need to come up?”

After the question is made his mouth doesn’t shut, jaw hanging open like he expects to have to complement or repeat himself once more, or maybe even apologize. It took a lot out of the kid to ask in the first place, and Val could tell he hadn’t given it the amount of thought she wished he had.

The lamp is lifted above Val’s head and bashed into his face. Beau’s back slams into the wall of the lift and as his hands shoot up the shovel falls at his feet. Joining shattered glass. This old, fragile container they are stuck inside of shakes, Val glimpses up as she hears something creak above their heads. They continue to go down as they should.

Beau cries out, his body slides down to the floor. Fearing another blow his arms are raised in a defensive pose but Val can spot blood streaking down his forehead. She drops the ruined lamp and picks the shovel instead, whacks it into his arms and across the top of his head. Beau slumps on top of his right shoulder, shouts in pain and cracks into a high-pitched whine. The lift comes to a full stop and he heaves as gravity tosses his guts around inside him. Val grabs pulls his boots off his feet and throws them aside in case the boy decided to kick, proceeds to drags him off by his ankles.

It isn’t a terribly long way, but what would be a two-minute walk or less turns into several when you are burdened by dead weight. Val wished they could have made this path together, side by side, admittedly she acted on impulse as soon as the slightest suspicion arose that Beau had caught on to the situation. She gave her actions little thought and it was a stroke of luck that the lights down here had been kept on—one day, Val would be able to navigate these tunnels blind as mole rat, without fire or oil-lamps, but she wouldn’t have managed it tonight.

Half-way through, Beau is showing signs of consciousness again, his legs try to bend and torso squirms, the gravel scratching his poor back raw. One of his brows had already grown swollen and the most of his face was painted over red, didn’t seem like was able to focus on much.

There was reason to believe the rain hadn’t reached them down here, until Val reaches the point where the ground suddenly dipped a foot or two, an end that blew out into a cave, walls of hard stone where illumination hadn’t been successfully installed, oval-like in shape and with a far reaching ceiling, like being stuck inside a dark, grand fishbowl. She steps down and her boots splash the water, as if in response unidentified sounds echo all the way across from where they stood.

Val turns around and pulls Beau up to the edge of their path, he puts up a bit of a fight, looks like he’s about to strike her but winces at his hand; the shovel broke a few of his fingers, might have dislocated a wrist.

 _“Let it happen”_  She removes her heavy coat to leave it behind before taking Beau into her arms, he’s smaller than herself but might’ve been heavier, and the strength she uses to carry him across the water with so much serenity is unknown to them both, surface rising to her hips at its deepest point. Beau has the time to think about these things, he has gone still and quiet, the situation so alien that freezing seems like the only option. He thinks to himself that he can’t believe Val would do him any serious harm, despite what had already taken place.

His head flops to the side, the good eye squinting towards a light coming from a hole afar, growing the closer they come to it. Noises continue to travel over to them, beyond the drips leaks and possible animals-- it’s whispering.

At the mouth of said bright cavity, his body is unceremoniously dumped. It rolls down a short slope of stone and lands in what turned out to be a shallow layer of mud that covered the center of this room, vast but nowhere near as much as the cave was. Val steps up to the top of the rocks, undoes the buttons of her shirt and leaves it to hang where it fell. Beau rolls onto his back and with his crippled hand hanging awkwardly from his wrist, he attempts to prop himself to a seated position. His face had lost half of its ability to reproduce emotion, but who watches closely can see his bewilderment. He turns over and tries to stand.

His body is weighted down by mud and his head is spinning, legs ache for no apparent reason but are still functional despite the rest of him trying to sabotage them. First on an elbow, then on the knees, a foot and then the other, Beau raises his head and  shapes are revealing themselves on top of an organic stage of clay and stone. Three figures in different stages of undress and three different postures. A nude woman who dangled her legs off the ledge hops off, splashes her feet into the mud, reaches out for him before Beau has the chance to react. He’s spun back around with an arm locked tightly under his chin, a fight response finally kicks in when faced with his stranger’s cold touch.

_“LET GO”_

First tries to weight her down but is held up by his own neck, tries to elbow her in the ribs but lacks the force.

_“NO, NO LET ME GO”_

_“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? **VAL**!”_

One of the men with the softer voice asks who he is from behind them, asks why he was there. The other one with the hoarser voice answers the first question, he knows his father, says his name, Beau recognizes him from the butcher place. He repeats question number two, the woman holding him grabs his chin and forces the boy to stop squirming and look ahead; his vision focuses on the one who brought him. It’s a flesh colored blur that takes shape as it approaches, a broad shouldered figure he saw often with his eyes open and shut; it had been menacing before, even when exposed like this, even when underneath him, but never in this way. There was a power in Val’s presence that got him off, an authoritarian feel defined by either age, status or attitude that inspired an arousing amount of fear. Women are sensual when they try to be dominant

But things looked very different from there.

She’s just a torso, a head and limbs with claws and sharp teeth, some Arizona predator that lost it’s fur to a ugly rash. There’s no beauty whatsoever acting as blinkers. Looking back at all the times they laid together, Beau is surprised he has made it this far.

 A hand extends that grabs one of his wrists, the behind him woman holds onto the other one; he screams in agony and she moves her hand up to the collar of his coat instead, after letting go of his fracture like its hot coal. Beau takes a deep breath and says:

_“Please”_

“He poisoned Mary” Val cuts him off

_“No!”_

“You did, you poisoned her son”

**_“No!”_ **

Both her hands grab him by the front of his shirt, balling up tightly in the fabric and shaking his body until it dizzily drops to its knees, the naked widow disfigured by dirt slips the coat she held onto off of his arms, this time merciless to the boy’s injury. It is tossed up the irregular stage into the hands of the older man, squatting closely to the ledge to watch the scene. Val’s hands slide up Beau’s neck and cup his face, digging her fingernails unto his cheeks, over the cuts made in the lift. “You didn’t ask him about the medication.”

_“I did!”_

_“Liar.”_

Over Val’s shoulder, Beau’s watery sight can barely catch the dark silhouettes moving behind the passage he was carried through, only their shoulders and up, closing in from each side of the cave and throwing their hands up to climb over the rocks, either to help or observe. Their conversation traveled the walls even at a lower volume, it’s a barbarian courtroom.

Beau twists his neck trying to set free from the grasp she had on his face, lay his case with any sort of dignity, but the other’s fingertips only sink deeper into his cheeks. She has kneed down to his level, staring, features drawing blanks.

“ _I didn’t wanna say anything_ ” He sniffs and coughs immediately when coagulated blood gets stuck in his throat _“I was scared he was gonna tell”_

_“Liar.”_

“ _You just gonna call me liar no matter what I say_?”

Val won’t respond. Beau’s brief fit of anger and frustration turns back into desperation, he squirms in her hands and wails before his entire body sunk, gave up on trying to maintain itself erect. He falls forward, forehead lands on Val’s collarbone.

_“Val”_

_“listen”_

_“you could be right”_

_“but Knoth could be right too”_

_“i’m scared”_

He whimpers. Val’s eyes shoot up at the three people in front of her, who watched attentively with their brows furrowed. The couple behind them had hoped into the room and their wet steps are heard nearing in each of Val’s ears until they reach over her shoulders to pull Beau out of her arms. Immediately he resumes his struggle, tossing his limbs with a strength he couldn’t seem to conjure against _her._ Either because he has been rendered to a plaything for them to bully, or because his efforts had been successful, he is dropped back down into the mud in the middle of the room, instead of attempting another escape however Beau is stuck mesmerized by the high ceiling above him, decorated with stalactites which shadows danced in the flickering yellow and orange lights created by the lit up torches hanging around them. They are having conversations that overlap like his vision, voices rise and fall and Val is always the calm one amongst them.

She comes to stand over him, straddling his stomach and whispering a question he can’t reply to nor hear.

 

* * *

 

 

_After Val cut his hair, he was baptized again. Head dipped into the river and screamed at by a preacher who hated him and the way Knoth dealt with the situation. Only mother and a couple of close friends were present, they felt a moral obligation to do it even if it was supposed to remain a secret. Val was held under by what he judged to be too long a time compared to the other baptisms he had witnessed, and for a moment down there he fully embraced and promised himself not to struggle if the man’s hand was to keep him where he was until he drowned. A strange dread overtook him when he was pulled back up, had readily breathed water into his lungs to speed up the process and now spat and coughed it up like a retard child left alone in the bathtub._

_He was sent off. Wrapped around a towel, freezing cold. His mother gave him a pat on the back and said that, at least now, things would be better for him. Men are God’s favorites and their lives on earth are easier._

_But when he was still under the surface of the river, what had echoed in Val’s ears had not been only the frantic swimming of terrified fish and air bubbles, much less Godly welcomings into manhood or any kind. Looking back now, that’s when he first heard it._

_The static. At the time confused with waves that not even the strongest current would be able to produce in that lake, at that blessed midday. It tickled his ears and disappeared with his first gasp for air as a new man._

_Later the same week, he met with that much younger boy with a dead mother, who constantly tripped after Val and used to say her hair was pretty. He asked if he could continue calling her a girl, he said he didn’t care._

_He asked if she was sad, if she was mad, if she was happy, asked why exactly things were happening the way they were, Val slapped him across the face and told him to shut the hell up, made him cry._

 

* * *

 

 

With insects biting through his cheeks, Val is gnawing at his own mouth and lips and shaking his head to get the tingling to stop, the millions of little legs marching across his face, they are inside his ears but this time but for some reason lacking the company and crackling of static. Things down here feel very strange and underwhelming and put him in a electric state of mind, between grinding his cunt against his groin and bashing Beau’s head into the mud and the hard ground beneath it. Val’s whole body still screams at what it judged to be excessive stillness, it wants to bounce on his cock but when he reaches down to take it out of the boy’s pants, it is as limp as he is. A flaccid piece of flesh that as it turns out had only been taken out to further desecrate him in death.

He shoots up as soon as Beau stops moving, a dark red halo beginning to grow around his head. Val jerks his own and tugs at the roots of his hair, wet it comes out in small clumps between Val’s fingers that he shakes off his hands compulsively. He moans and cracks his neck, his shoulders, shudders and falls right into the arms of the shorter woman who crawled out of hiding earlier. She’s laughing a laugh once sweet and youthful now distorted by a phlegmy throat, they are all rotting from the inside from living in these conditions, the humidity and the stuffy air, haven’t seen the sunlight in days. Eventually this is how they will all part.

The plump woman is pulling Val away to the back of the room, the two men are undressing Beau’s corpse and picking him up. One of them runs a wet hand over his bloodied and muddy face, ignoring the flattened back of his skull, smushy contents spilling and barely clinging to his hair He holds him against his chest with one arm while the other man watches, hands ready to receive half the boy’s weight so they could carry him off.

The first comments on Beau’s beauty. He remembers his face in the elevator, when it hadn’t been shattered to pieces.

Val shakes his head, scratches at his face. He says he can feel something crawling all over him and the shorter woman keeps him from touching it, shushes him, looks him in the eye and says “ _It’s nothing.”_

_“Please touch me?”_

He backs into someone else’s body, melts into them and into whatever pair of hands joined, flopped back his head and let them quiet his aches and worries, he realizes how much he loves and trusts these people while he’s in their arms in that estate of complete submission. He thought he was their leader but not even hierarchy had a place there.

Something clicks inside Val’s brain in that second, his fears of carrying the weight of the world on his back, they’re gone. He relaxes into the nest of flesh cradling him, closes his eyes, feels a delicate touch to his cheek and something else slip between his legs and inside him, whenever his lids flicker open it is not for long but he is received with gentle stares from ungodly faces. They shush and caress him, rough textures of appendages covered in a grainy layer of sand rubbing against his smooth body. He falls asleep in their warmth, but wakes ups feeling like he hasn’t rested at all.

It is so late when he leaves that it is also too early. Flashes of the night before flooding his mind as Val stumbles down the hill with the sun gently kissing his skin. He’s all by himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Entering the town he had immediately fallen to the feet of the first young woman he saw crossing the empty streets to collect her rations or whatever she did. A young thing with black hair and big hazel eyes that was seemingly horrified to catch herself alone in the street at that hour of the morning with Val coming her way. He was clean save for his boots but pale as a ghost, a mechanical like posture that made her uneasy as he closed in on her, forcing the girl to back against a wooden pillar under someone’s balcony. He had a strange smell to him.

Val grabbed her wrist and dropped to his knees, said she was beautiful and that he could feel life radiating from her.

Stuck his face in her crotch, took a deep breath. The girl froze, not even wanting to scream in fear of attracting attention.

He rose up again and stroked her cheek, leaning close to whisper.

“You should come speak to me”

“As soon as you can would be best”

“I’ll tell Knoth.” She stuttered.

“Tell the fat fuck whatever you want.”

He left her. Locked himself in his house and to the soft static licking his eardrums he slept for the entire day and another half. A complete blackout, no dreams whatsoever but the constant hum. He didn’t hear the people who came to throw rocks at his windows, scream his name accompanied slander, none disturbed him. When Val woke up, he did so naturally but immediately recognized banging at his door, having no idea of how long it had gone on for. He rose peacefully and got half-dressed with no hurry. Paul’s hoarse voice could be heard outside through the balcony, he wasn’t saying many words but his grunts were enough, especially as they grew louder and more regular the longer Val took to greet him.

Paul, an older man with the beginnings of a beer gut and thick, silvering beard surrounding his red face, immediately forces his way inside then the lock on the door is undone. Reminds him of Josiah, months ago making everything smell like cinnamon tea. Paul smelled like tobacco and sweat.

“Where is my son?”

He demands. Val adjusts the aged robe around his body and tilts his head.

“I don’t follow.”

“Where is Beau?! He was with you!”

“Yes, then he left.”

Paul walks past him, looking from side to side and calling Beau’s name as he prodded around Val’s kitchen. He asked if he’d like to look inside the cupboards, the man didn’t find him funny in the slightest and slapped a vase with expired flowers off his table, it flung nearly all the way across the room and shattered to pieces on the ground.

_“YOU AND YOUR FORSAKEN SATAN CLUB DID SOMETHING TO MY SON”_

“Maybe he ran away, he hates it here.”

_“HE WOULD **NEVER** ”_

“He would, he would take your savings and leave. He even tried to talk me into it.”

The old man’s eyes fill with water, he slaps a hand over his forehead and chokes up at the heavens, recites a small, rushed prayer. When his head snaps back down the tears run down his cheeks, wrinkly and stained in sun spots from the years of work behind him. His eyes become small red slits with the way he scrunched up his face.

“I always knew about you. Damn snake _. Had you not took enough of our children_ _yet_?”

“Your fanaticism took _my_ children, and scared off yours.”

“ _Heretic. ”_ he spat.

“Paul? Do me a favor” Val reaches for the doorknob, turns and flings it wide open. Looks deep into Paul’s ugly face and says

“go tell your Papa all about my slippery, devil-whore ways”

“say you entered my home and saw me sucking satan’s ass”

“while squatting over your son’s severed cock.”

So much had gone on inside that community, people spooned cum into women’s cunts like medicine, handed their pubescent daughters over like packed meat to be seasoned by the bloated, gassy beast who made all the rules in which they lived by, people who were ill were thrown in a pit to live among their own filth, one day they all woke up and decided the children they made and cared for should have their necks slit

The things that seemed to knock the air out of these people, it amazed him.

Paul slipped past him and out the door with his mouth agape, kept his back against the frame behind him because he couldn’t be far away enough from Val. The deacon protruded his own body out the door to watch him leave, staggering like a man who had just gotten his legs back from the shop. He looks over his shoulder after having put a good distance between himself and Val’s front door, he turns around, raises his arm and points, shouting

_“DEMON”_

_“WITCH”_

_“HERETIC”_

Paul spins back around and continues his way at a slightly faster pace. Val looks around at the few people who happened to be nearby. An elderly man and his wife sat at their front porch across the road, a boy walked below them carrying two gates in his hands, frantic chickens inside whose wings began flailing in fear after Paul’s parting words, Val’s neighbor stuck her head out her window and quietly looked at him.

Nonchalantly, he shuts his door. Locks and bolts it. Does the same to the windows, rushes upstairs to close his balcony and draw the curtains.

Val is left standing in darkness staring at a single ray of light the cut his room in half. He listens for the break out of a civil war, but it doesn’t come.

He backs away into the corridor, pulling his eye away from that slit feels like separating a child from it’s mother. He quietly steps over to his desk, absorbing each creak of the floorboards below his bare feet.

Sits down and fixes his eyes on the few sheets of blank paper left. Val’s toes are curling around the legs of the chair, knuckles being cracked nervously in his lap. He’s reciting to himself and perfecting exactly what he’d like to write in his very last letter to Sullivan Knoth.

 

* * *

 


End file.
